Note 682 — Chapter III
Reading edition
An emphatic sentence from the pen of the able and candid historian Lecky may be quoted here. Referring to "the sullen and rancorous nature of an intensity of hatred" towards Chatham, which led the king, against all advice and urgency, to refuse any aid from that noble statesman, Lecky writes "This episode appears to me the most criminal in the whole reign of George III., and in my own judgment it is as criminal as any of those acts which led Charles I. to the scaffold" (Hist. of Eng. in the XVIIIth Cent., iv. 83).